From the publisher’s website: Chonggi Mah represents a unique figure in Korean poetry similar to that of William Carlos Williams, but with a twist. While he is recognized as an award-winning poet in Korea, he has worked in the United States as a doctor and professor. Many of his poems reflect his work as a … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 109)
Strong Winds at Mishi Pass
From the publisher’s website: The first widely available translation in English of one of South Korea’s most important contemporary poets. Dong-Gyu Hwang is recognized as one of the most important poets in contemporary South Korea. This volume draws work from three of his recent books and includes a number of his Wind Burial poems that haven’t … [Read More]
Woman on the Terrace
From the publisher’s website: Moon Chung-hee’s lyrical poems represent poignant self-examination, evoking moments of bewilderment and hopeful resignation to the passage of time and imprisoning conditions of her life. Her work explores the desire to escape the fetters of domesticity as a vehicle for understanding a woman’s journey and her negotiations between the desire for … [Read More]
Paper
From the publisher’s website: The image of paper, beautifully wrought as the controlling metaphor, runs through each poem sometimes to lament humanity lost over dazzling civilization, sometimes to call for restoration by means of everything good a sheet of paper symbolizes, all in a voice quite pithy and restrained. This poetry book is a grain … [Read More]
Gas Light
From the publisher’s website: A Short Piece It must be that the azaleas Bloom at dawn And fall at dusk. Over the low pine grove Behind the rocks in Samchung Dong They droop Whenever the clouds pass. All through April Unnoticed by any This year’s azaleas also Must be blooming in the shade And falling … [Read More]
Forty Two Greens
From the publisher’s website: The poems in this book, by the way they speak to all parts of our minds, invite us to come alive and experience each movement, each emotion and action, and some statements therein, intuitively and aesthetically. This is about a Korean man’s everyday life in the milieu of contemporary America; his … [Read More]
What is Darkening
From the publisher’s website: What Is Darkening is a book of poetry which shows a mature exuviation. Seeing the intrinsic darkness of life, the poet casts off the hard shell of consciousness and can see ‘thousands of colors’ in a tree and hear ‘too many sounds’ in a drop. She is now a ‘discriminator of cries.’ … [Read More]
Beyond Self: 108 Korean Zen Poems
Korea’s premier poet, the former Buddhist monk Ko Un, presents 108 Zen poems. From these poems we can taste hear, smell and see the life of Ko Un, who is affectionately called “the great mountain peak” by his friends. Note: this collection was subsequently updated and republished as What? in 2008 [Read More]
What?: 108 ZEN Poems
Throughout his eventful life as a monk, poet, novelist, political dissident, husband, and father, Ko Un has remained a traveler on the Way. The poems in this collection, though strictly within the true Zen tradition, are as witty and down-to-earth as they are contemplative. Described by Allen Ginsberg as thought-stopping Koan-like mental firecrackers, the poems … [Read More]
The Brush and the Sword: Kasa, Korean Classical Poems in Prose
Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Korean & Introduced with Commentaries & Notes by Sung-Il Lee. Sung-Il Lee lays before us samples of the great classical form of Korean poetry called Kasa, so sadly unknown to western readers along with any coherent knowledge of the country’s past and its culture. One will be so much better … [Read More]
Scale and Stairs
From the publisher’s website: The poems of Heeduck Ra are charged with a friction between image and idea, sound and sense. She glimpses an arc, which may light a path from the visible world to the invisible. Her work occupies the ever-shifting border region between what we know and what we do not know, a … [Read More]
Poems from Korea: From the Earliest Era to the Present
From the publisher’s website: The Koreans, according to the Chinese chronicles, are ‘the people who enjoy singing and dancing’ and who regaled their gods with dance and song. Since then poetry has been an essential part of Korean life and has been regarded as the highest of the arts. In this first comprehensive anthology of … [Read More]
Healing Historical Trauma in South Korean Film and Literature
From the publisher’s website: Through South Korean filmic and literary texts, this book explores affect and ethics in the healing of historical trauma, as alternatives to the measures of transitional justice in want of national unity. Historians and legal practitioners who deal with transitional justice agree that the relationship between historiography and justice seeking is … [Read More]
Translucency: Selected Poems of Chankyung Sung
From the publisher’s website: Translucency puts together about fifty poems by Chankyung Sung that showcase his dexterous command of metaphor and subtle sensibility toward language. In these poems, Sung portrays a complex world of man’s spirit with refined language, opening a new horizon of intellectual poetry, or “metaphysical lyrics,” in Korea. It is not the … [Read More]
Branded Entertainment in Korea
From the publisher’s website: Branded Entertainment in Korea examines the varied texts and wider context of branded entertainment and related advertising and marketing communications practices in Korea. The book discusses the origins, development, current state, ethics, and regulations of branded entertainment in Korea, considering the impact and implications for communication users and regulators as well … [Read More]
The Encyclopedia of Daily Life: A Woman’s Guide to Living in Late-Chosŏn Korea
From the publisher’s website: This volume is a fully annotated translation of an early nineteenth-century encyclopedia, the Kyuhap ch’ongsŏ (The Encyclopedia of Daily Life). Written by Lady Yi (1759-1824) as a household management aid for her daughters and daughters-in-law, the work is a treasure trove of information on how women of higher status in the … [Read More]